France 2014 No.2

And here we are! All cosily settled into our dear little cottage. And it isn't cold, or snowing or raining! Instead, the past few days have been wonderfully mild with plenty of sun - quite the opposite to what we were expecting. In fact, to prove my point, I can tell you that I am wearing a short-sleeved summer blouse and a jersey and am perfectly warm enough. This time last year, if I remember correctly, I was wearing about four layers of warm clothes and even then not keen to go outdoors. I hope this is a sign of things to come.
Our trip across to France was tiring and very, very long. An hour and a bit to the airport; almost half an hour to get our hire car handed in and get ourselves checked in; then another hour and a half before we could board the plane. One and three quarter hours to Johannesburg where we sat in the plane for an hour while the rest of the passengers came aboard. From there it was nine hours to Istanbul, where we arrived at 5.30 in the morning. After a five hour wait in the airport, we started the last leg of our journey, which took another five hours. Once we were finally at our destination - Toulouse - there was still and hour and a half's drive to the place where our car is kept, then another hour to get to our little cottage. I think, all in all, we travelled for about thirty hours with minimal sleep. And do you know what? I think I am getting too old for this sort of thing!! But it was a joy to see our friends again and to be back in this country that we love so much.
We slept for thirteen hours straight, no doubt due to exhaustion, but helped by the fact that it is so wonderfully quiet here and with the shutters all closed, it is dark even in the daytime, so it was  easy to just go on sleeping. We eventually roused ourselves and went to find a supermarket where we could recharge our phone - and get some food of course. By the next day, Saturday, we were completely back to normal again.
This cottage is a different one to the one we usually stay in, and about fifty kilometres away, further north. It is a renovated barn and has a few novel features. Downstairs we have a kitchen/diner, a bathroom and a bedroom with two single beds. Upstairs, the large attic space has been made into a bedroom and a lounge. Nothing novel about that, you may think, but there is no dividing wall between lounge and bedroom. A good case for keeping the bedroom tidy, I would say - in case one has to entertain guests.
Which is just what we did yesterday. As we will see very little of my cousin for the rest of our stay in France this year, we invited her to lunch yesterday. Not a five-star meal, I don't think, but a good chance to catch up on news and have a good chat. As we are only going to be at this address for a week, we didn't want to go mad in the supermarket and finish up with masses of food at the end of our time here. As it is, I can see us eating left overs for a few days!
We have walked around to see what is what, and what has changed and are delighted to see that, really, nothing has changed. The little fortified town that we are just outside, looks exactly as it has done for last 400 years, although there may be a few new houses on the outskirts. Yesterday evening while we were walking around we came across a large group of hunters who seemed surprised to see us. As they were all wearing glow-in-the-dark jackets to avoid shooting each other, and we didn't have such things, we made ourselves scarce quite quickly. So we don't know if they were hunting wild boar or deer. Can you imagine a group of hunters armed with shotguns, hunting deer in the suburbs in South Africa? Or perhaps that is not so unimaginable - we just see it differently there.
I seem to be having a bit of a problem adding pictures to this blog - I will try to sort it out before next time.